2016 has definitely been the year of backup applications leveraging the cloud. In the start of last year we saw Veeam build a product called Cloud Connect which used it's backup software to replicate Virtual machines to another location. To spin this backup up into a useable environment for Always On or a Disaster recovery solution you then needed to utilize some third party hardware or convert the machines into AWS Machines. This could be done however it was not the easiest and went against what the cloud was for ... an always on scaleable solution! It did mean Small to Medium business; could start to have a cost effective Disaster Recovery site without the huge costs of replicating their whole onsite environment to another data center ( something only enterprise or large organisations could pay for)

Zerto a pretty new product on the scene enhanced this technology by reducing RPO's ( recovery point objective (time to copy backup files) to minutes instead of hours which means if a site when done lost work would greatly be reduced. Zerto also enabled replication from cross platform products for example replicate a Vmware environment to a Hyper V environment to save on licensing costs for your DR Solution. It also in Version 4 allowed you to replicate VMware to AWS - http://www.zerto.com/products/enterprise/replication-backup-to-aws-amazon-web-services/. Zerto also has a minimum license of 25 virtual machines which is the high end of a medium size company in the UK.

The slight problem with Veeam V9 and below is you needed to host your own infrastructure to be able to host the repository. Now with Veeam 9.5 you can replicate this straight to Azure which means you only pay for the storage it uses until you turn the product one.

Released a year ago, Microsoft Azure Backup Server used Microsoft technology to backup Windows Machines using the Windows Agent directly to Azure. This was good however agents installs are not the best way to back things up now thanks to virtual environments. Now Microsoft Azure Backup Server is agent less which means it can backup your whole Virtual Center Server environment including Linux machines to Azure.

Customers new or existing should always have two layers of backup protection

The first layer is always an onsite copy of company data which allows for a speedy overnight backup to local disk over a high-speed network which gives you the value of speedy restores of large data chunks if needed ( e.g. a Ransomware attack )

The next layer of backup is to always have an offsite backup, so in the event of a disaster such as a building fire, theft or flooding, the servers could be fully restored when the backups are brought back to the new site with replacement hardware. Around 5 years ago when the average internet upload was around 1mb/s transferring 0.41 Gig / Hour, and cloud storage was more expensive , our customers utilised offsite copies using Tapes and Hard Drives.

However now thanks to new Fibre connections to UK Business which can delivery 100mb UP and Down, with unlimited plans, the offsite backup can now go straight to the cloud instead of worrying about the administration of changing Tapes and failure of External Hard Drives due to lots of motion.

At Response IT we utilize two main Cloud Services to provide our customers with always on restores and limit the administration of backups.

Veaam Cloud Connect for Virtual Backups

Integrates into VMware and existing Veeam Infrastructure
Item Level restores of Applications such as Exchange, SQL and Active Directory and Individual Files
Restore whole virtual machines ( If a virus hits a server you can restore everything in a short space of time without hunting down the infected files )
Automated Restore tests ( Servers get booted up weekly automatically to check everything is working as expected )
Inbuilt Encryption and Compression

CrashPlan for Desktop and Physical server Backups

File Level Block by Block copies which backs up data as soon as you change it. This gives long 30 day restores from a self managed web interface
Backs up Remote User laptops straight to the cloud without them needing to be in the office
Weekly Reports straight to site managers to check what's been backed up and what hasn't
License included in the CrashPlan Backup Subscription
Inbuilt Encryption and Compression

Both of these services utilize Datacenters with Gigabit internet connections with the availability of getting data copied to Hard drives for immediate restores in disaster.